Rockets have cut playoff rotation and it's painfully easy to see why

Rockets have cut playoff rotation and it's painfully easy to see why

After slipping up at home in Game 2 and allowing the Utah Jazz to even up the series at 1-1, the Houston Rockets kicked it into another gear for Game 3.

They traveled into a hostile arena to play in front of a packed crowd of Jazz fans who are believing in their team in a big way after the impressive road victory over the West’s No. 1 seed.

And then the Rockets promptly jumped to a 30-point halftime lead.

The Game 2 loss was a bit head-scratching, but with James Harden shooting 2-of-10 from 3-point range and no one aside from Chris Paul and Clint Capela able to do much of anything offensively, it was understandable.

Even in that loss, though, one thing has remained consistent since the Rockets’ closeout game in the opening round, and that’s been Mike D’Antoni’s decision to cut the rotation down.

D’Antoni has tightened it up in a big way since that Game 5 victory, even when his team is up by a huge amount.

(Photo by Gene Sweeney Jr./Getty Images)

The Rockets have now played four games since that point, and it’s proven to take something incredible for the coach to have more than 1-2 players tally more than 10 minutes per game off the bench.

In that closeout Game 5, the Rockets had one bench player (Eric Gordon, 32 minutes) play more than 10 minutes, while Ryan Anderson and Nene Hilario finished right at 10 minutes.

Then over the first two games of the series against the Jazz, only Gordon and Luc Mbah a Moute played double-digit minutes off the bench. This includes a Game 1 which featured the Rockets up by 25 at halftime.

The lone exception to D’Antoni’s new extremely tight rotations came in that ridiculous Game 3 blowout Friday, as the Rockets were up by 30 at halftime and around 25-30 for the bulk of the second half, allowing the coach to let two other players in Hilario and Gerald Green see 14 and 17 minutes.

For comparison’s sake, in the first four games of the Timberwolves series, the Rockets had four bench players tally at least 11 minutes on three occasions.

While D’Antoni’s approach may be more about just keeping his top players on the floor for longer to avoid any risk of losing a lead, it also likely has to do with the production of members of the bench.

Over the three games against the Jazz, here’s a look at the total number of minutes, as well as the +/- for a few of Houston’s bench players:

Luc Mbah a Moute: 59 minutes at -22

Eric Gordon: 96 minutes at +11

Gerald Green: 27 minutes at -25

Ryan Anderson: 20 minutes at -7

Nene Hilario: 22 minutes at +0

Obviously, based on +/- alone, you could argue that Mbah a Moute shouldn’t be playing as much as he is, but his defense is unquestionably a selling point for why he should see the minutes. With that said, aside from Gordon, no one on the Houston bench who’s seen minutes is impressing.

Even when looking deeper into Gordon’s numbers, if not for a +21 outing in Game 3, he’d have a pretty mediocre +/- himself.

Based on these numbers alone and D’Antoni’s willingness to play names like Harden, Paul and Capela big minutes even with huge leads, it’s hard to envision things changing as the playoffs roll on.

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